


Resurrection.

by MissFenixx



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternative realities, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Other, Poetic, Resurrection, Sad John, Soulmates, sort of fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:42:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26332090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissFenixx/pseuds/MissFenixx
Summary: “And my brain is like an orchestraPlaying on, insaneWill you love me like you loved me in the January rain?”-Big Thief, “Mary”«”What does it mean, then, to be soulmates?”John stared at him for a minute, taken by surprise.“Do you really need words?”Funny thing to say, that, coming from the poet. Paul had always been the wordless one, melody freak. Then again, their joint hands did have something of a poem grasped between them. Maybe they were the poem. John would know.»
Relationships: John Lennon & Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney/Paul McCartney
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	1. Happy Birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> This began as an edited version of my work "The First Resurrection Case" because I hated the original but it ended up being so different that I decided to keep both, and so... Here. This is the other version... Really, a different story.  
> Thank you for reading :)

He sighed as he entered the kitchen to make himself some coffee. He wasn’t hungry: his birthday depressed him to no end. He smiled to himself while thinking of adding his name to the numberless members of the music industry who’d ended their lives. He was late to the 27 club, though.

As he brew the coffee, John tried to ignore the wooden walls that had replaced the white ones so long ago, in a futile attempt to recreate warmth: John knew they were still white walls after all. He tried to ignore the silence, knowing the radio just would just deepen it, and tried to ignore the empty spaces, filled with more empty spaces that people called decoration. The house was big, white and empty, and anyone could tell the minute they stepped in it. The wood, decoration and narrow hallways could do little to mitigate the effect of John’s soul.

Had he always been trapped in a white room?

John was miserable. He had been so for, approximately, 40 years.

It had been 39 years and 11 months since Paul had been shot.

39 years and 11 months of empty rooms and hollow conversations.

And now, the day he was turning eighty, John realized _he_ was the empty and hollow one. And once more, he decided nothing and laid on his bed a little longer, wishing he’d been the one.

Really, he’d been able to pull through most of them. When his uncle died, when his mother died, when Stuart died, when Alma Cogan died, when Brian died, when George died, when… Anyway, when all of the people John loved, some too much, had died, John had been able to live through. Some ripped a seam of his soul, like his mom or Stuart, and it’d hurt so much he’d wondered how he’d made it.

But Paul.

He wondered why he couldn’t. Was it the way he’d died? Killed by a crazy man in his holidays of 1980, in the midst of a happy family life he’d always deserved? Just when John was starting to get really friendly with him again? Was it the guilt?

John thought his mom and Stuart also had quite violent and sudden deaths and he hadn’t felt so dead inside.

He’d been able to pull through enough, though. Enough to raise his kid. Enough to keep going and have some good days. But half of him was dead, and he felt cold on his feet as if he was a dead man walking.

At first, Yoko had put up with it, but she eventually divorced. John kept half of Sean’s custody, though, and that was probably the only thing that kept him going.

It was funny, how differently he’d dealt with grief when it came to Paul. His mom, he’d almost drank himself into a coma; Stuart, a quieter parallel. But with Paul, he just stopped. Stopped going out, stopped making music, stopped using drugs, stopped sleeping, stopped eating. He became dangerously thin and dead on his feet, which eventually had Yoko call Mimi for help, and John’s aunt showed up to force-feed him, shower him and sing him to sleep. John recovered, a little bit, enough to re-start practicing those everyday chores, but the hollow inside of him stayed.

He only played sad songs then.

And yet, after all that time, there he found himself another morning at the big house in L.A., all alone in that king-sized bed, and thinking about his 80th birthday. To be honest, John was surprised he’d lasted so long. He’d expected to die from the starving, the cigarettes, the pure _sadness,_ and all that’s what had kept the idea of suicide at bay. Now, at eighty…

He was alone now, again. He’d asked the service not to show up. It had been a lifetime since he’d had a birthday cake, he thought. It had been a lifetime since he’d really craved anything. John smiled, sipping his coffee and feeling nothing. Well, how times change you.

Today, he was craving gunpowder.

He thought it was poetic.

He’d had some good times. It was hard to understand, then, why it had gotten so bad as the years rolled by. The older he got, the lonelier he found himself: some of his friends died, some found peace in their home and no need to go on regular visits with him, and some just… fell away. He had a painful time accepting he’d not made any close friends after Paul’s death: they always seemed too far away. The kind that you laugh with, but don’t cry with.

George was dead. He had been for about nineteen years. Ringo was very much alive, doing his thing and being by far the most successful one now (although John was sure that, if Paul had lived, there wouldn’t have been a competition even against that musical monster), but they hadn’t talked in decades. Sean had become a big man and started his own life, paying his father several visits whenever he was around. He was the only person who loved him, really, if John let himself hope for so much.

He’d made up with Julian, though. It was very hard at the beginning, sure, but in the end, he got to meet the lad and see him every now and then until their bond strengthened as much as it would ever do. It was nice. They weren’t close like they were with Sean, but they were buddies. And he made up with Cynthia too, though that relationship was very spiky.

All of those changes had been encouraged by George back in the nineties, and he’d taken his time to comply. But not long enough to miss George’s proud smile.

But that had been a lifetime ago.

It wasn’t all that bad; he knew that. He’d had many good years. He’d even dated a few women after all that Yoko mess, he’d had many years’ worth of therapy and he’d taken to painting for a while, making a living out of it. He’d had a peaceful few years away from the city, though not exactly in the countryside, and he’d been able to enjoy himself again. He knew it wasn’t the same as it had been when Paul existed, yes, but it had been something. He’d even become friends with Linda and helped her and her kids through some hard times, and contacted them again after she passed. He had even let himself get convinced by his friend David Bowie to go on a tour with him in the late eighties, and he’d had a good time. He didn’t write many new songs on his own, but he had fun doing it with Bowie.

But now he was alone, and all of his mind came back to the happiest days of his life. Which were, of course, with Paul.

He hadn’t questioned it enough back then, if it had been something more than friendship to him. He’d only known that he loved Paul way too much, more than the boy could correspond, but he had ignored the meaning behind it. He didn’t want to know it.

As the years rolled by, though, he understood that he wasn’t all for women only. He’d toyed with that side of himself a few years before Paul’s death, during his ‘lost weekend’, and found a new life inside of him.

But Paul? He didn’t know. It didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t as it had been with Yoko, pure passion and wild love. In a way, it was less intense yet stronger: it had lasted years and taken everything in him with it. He loved Paul. He loved him more than he could ever love again, more than he’d ever loved before. And yet, he wouldn’t dare categorize it as a romantic thing, because that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t only someone to kiss, to sleep with, to laugh with, live with, compose with, hold hands with. He’d managed many years without all of that and had been ok, mostly. It was just being with him in the same room that soothed him, smelling him that made him smile, crossing eyes with him and communicating a world. It was that kind of connection that he could only categorize as soulmates. And although the word didn’t cover it all, he knew that it meant more than friends, more than a couple, more than partners. It meant two halves of a whole.

He knew, deep down, that it wasn’t the exact same to Paul as it was to him. Paul’s soulmate had been Linda. And yet… John knew no other to fill that space inside of him. He regretted now, as he had for so many years, having acted on jealousy so often, ruining things between them slowly but surely. He found himself celebrating his 80th birthday and wishing to be best friends with his deceased soulmate Paul McCartney again.

John finished his coffee and put the mug away. He didn’t wash it.

Instead, he got comfortable on the kitchen chair, placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.


	2. You Have Got Forty Years.

He opened the door and she was there. Smiling.

“Mom”

For some reason, John wasn’t surprised to see her. Not particularly relieved, either. It just felt normal, as if they’d just seen each other the other day instead of sixty-three years ago.

“John, hello” Julia’s voice was warm “Tell me, son, you reckon I look nice in this dress?”

It was a nice dress.

“It’s been a long time” They were sitting in John’s kitchen table set. It was white. That morning it had been wooden.

“Well, you disappeared” The walls were white too, and the rooms big. That morning they had been small and wooden.

She laughed. “Yeah, wish I didn’t. Couldn’t help it now, could I?” John made an uncommitted sound.

The silence was just as deep as it had always been, his words not really cutting through. There were no decorations on the walls or rugs on the floor. There had been plenty when John had woken up.

“You reckon this looks naked?” he asked his mom. The only color came from Julia’s reddish hair. It looked redder, then. The rest was white. _Dead_ white, like grey.

His mom looked at him curiously, as if he’d asked a funny question.

“It’s you” _Obviously_ , her face said. The house is you.

_It looks empty_ , John thought. His mom laughed and John realized he’d spoken out loud.

“That’s because he’s not here yet”

_Silly boy._


	3. Now and Then.

Paul thought he might be going senile.

For the what might have been the fourth morning on a row, Paul tried to recover his breath as silently as he could as not to wake Nancy, sitting up in bed and trying to remember his dream. Not that he could forget it, really, but he worried about one day waking up bothered and not know why.

He’d been dreaming an awful lot of John lately.

Most of the dreams were good. Memories from their earlier days together, from days in the band, composing, to making the movies or just sleeping at a hotel. Just random moments of what he realized now was happiness, which made him terribly nostalgic and yet weirdly warm and content. Those were good days, and it was nice to have them come back to him.

Some, a few, were from his childhood or early youth: composing with John at the strawberry fields, waiting for the bus in Penny Lane with him, getting drunk in Hamburg with him… Even when he dreamt of times before he’d met John, the lad was always there. It was weird, but oddly fitting.

That night, though, he’d dreamt of a big white empty house, with a very small flame in it waiting for a breeze to blow. There were no air movements in the house, though. Barely enough to breathe. He squinted at the small flame and felt a huge wave of pity. Hurt. He wanted to blow gently on the flame, see it ignite.

He got up and made his way to the kitchen before Nancy opened her eyes. Mary was there, though, getting the kids ready for school. Nancy and he had been spending a few days with Mary and Simon, trying to perk up their days. They had been stangely hollow for Paul, lately.

Paul hated that.

He’d spent his life running from pain, though. It’d caught up with him a number of times, true enough, and destroyed him. He hated feeling destroyed. He’d mostly tried to keep moving, keep doing, keep going until he dropped dead, in hopes of not having to deal with it.

He had tons of good things to distract himself with. Kids, wife, music, kids, new wife, music, kid, new wife, music… Lots of friends, projects of different sorts, taking care of many things himself, interviews… He could keep going. But as he grew older, for some reason, he couldn’t stop looking back, and he couldn’t stop remembering. And it hurt. He had one kid left to raise (half the time, since he had shared custody), grandchildren and a wife. It should be enough, and it had for many years, but he couldn’t stop _feeling_ the old pain.

He missed John so much it hurt.

He’d been able to avoid being crushed by it since it’d happened, in 1980. He’d had quite a number of breakdowns, most in Linda’s presence, but he’d quite managed to live through happily. Now, at seventy-nine, he wished he could see his old friend more than he wished for anything. Except maybe his children’s happiness.

He felt guilty, a bit, because he loved Linda. But he didn’t miss her as much as he missed John, and he couldn’t put his finger on why.

He’d heard, once, someone talking about soulmates, though. Someone saying that the nature of a soulmate isn’t the same as “love of your life”. Extremely debatable, Paul had thought, but the argument was that a soulmate was your half, while the love of your life was an “added piece you didn’t know you needed”. Like your soulmate is your opposite complementary, like the moon and the sun, but the love of your life is just complementary, like the moon and the sea, or the moon and the stars. The speaker compared one to two sides of one coin (soulmates), and the other to two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle (love of life). It didn’t make much sense, really, but Paul reconsidered it as he thought of John and Linda.

He made himself some tea as his grandkids kissed him goodbye before going to catch the bus. Mary smiled at him and sat at the kitchen table to finally eat her own breakfast. Paul sat with her, an apple in hand. Mary raised her eyebrows.

“An apple?”

Paul smiled mysteriously.

“With all the muscle movement I’m doing at this age you’d think I’d need less fuel” Then he winked “Not hungry”

Mary, who every other morning had laughed, looked at him a bit more intentely.

“Dad, are you ok?” Paul raised his eyebrows.

“Yes; old, that’s all. Why you ask?” Mary smiled sadly, a bit hesitant.

“You weren’t hungry when mom died, either. Or when John died. Or when grandpa died” Paul avoided her eyes, focusing on his fruit.

“Hm” He’d chosen, a long time ago (and after some therapy when Linda had died) not to lie too much about his feelings. It ‘wasn’t healthy’ or something, and it hurt his loved ones. But this, what could he say? “It’s been a long time, now, hasn’t it?”

Mary hesitated, then looked down and hummed.

“Every now and then they come back to me. Old age is when you can’t keep running even when you want to”

Paul looked unbothered when Mary looked up, and gave her a smile she knew better than to believe.

“You know. Joints”

That night, Paul had an old John dream.

It was a cold Sunday morning of 1961, and they were in Paris. The sun had been showing its first rays, a couple of them landing on the floor of the otherwise dim room through the high window, while the young boys giggled in the narrow bed up against the wall of their crappy hotel room, pushing each other like little toddlers. They had been singing made up songs, and since they had no guitars or any instruments with them, they made up the tunes with their voices too. They were giggling as if they were drunk, but they weren’t. It was simple joy, giddiness, the simplest kind you can find. They were young, free, and they loved each other.

It was only them, in a cold morning in a foreign country, alone in the world, and Paul had never felt warmer.

He woke up smiling, then stared at the picture that now hung from a frame on his studio wall halfway to the bathroom and started crying. The sleeping John below the French duvets stayed happy, though.

He was thinking of John that afternoon, as he turned right in the next street to get to Beatrice’s highschool. He didn’t see the car.


	4. Forty Years is What You've Got.

He couldn’t say he hadn’t missed her.

Truly, Paul thought, he had stopped being a child the day Mary passed away, and he wondered distractedly if seeing her again meant he could let go of the rope.

He didn’t feel like he was gripping it, though. Maybe he’d let it slip already.

“Mom” He vaguely wondered if this wasn’t a bit unusual. Hadn’t it been about sixty-five years since he’d last seen her? Why did it feel like it was yesterday?

“You’ve done a lot, now, haven’t you?” Mary smiled at him, caressing his cheek “Bringing it down a notch, wonder if you could help ol’ mom mend this dress, now?”

The dress was a bit ripped.

The house had been filled with people when he’d left. Now, though, it was empty, and the silence was a bit deafening as Mary sat down where, earlier, her granddaughter with the same name had sat.

“You named her after me” Paul smiled a bit, matching his mom, and he tried to feel a bit warmer. It was freezing in the house: he was sure in the morning it had been warmer.

“Yes. She ended up just as sweet” Mary hummed, focused on her labor. The sound she made was almost numbed by the silence. He could feel the melodies written in the walls, though, as if forgotten. Or waiting.

“I would’ve liked her”

There was something surrealist about that comment. It was a comment Paul would’ve made himself, about Mary, but it sounded staged coming from her. But Mary was the only warm thing in the room.

Paul noticed that the house seemed smaller than it had seemed that morning, as if it’d shrank into the size of his childhood house. Or into the size of his heart.

“It’s smaller in here, isn’t it?”

“Well, you spend all your time playing out” Mary didn’t look up from her labor, unpreoccupied.

“But it seems colder, lonely”

Mary looked up, as if surprised to hear that.

“Well, honey, you’ve left a lot of forgotten things here, haven’t you? A lot of forgotten you. Things grow colder if they’re not cared for”

 _My heart’s cold_ , Paul realized. Mary smiled.

“Oh, go on, silly boy: go looking for him already. He’s waiting”


	5. Innocence.

“You know, you look lovely when you smile”

John tried not to do exactly that, blush creeping in in an almost lazy way. The day was dying, and the sun bled into the horizon. As the voice of his mate strengthened by his side, John observed the moon grow lighter, taking up a white calm spot on the sky. Watching the sun bleed with almost elegance.

“It’s just very authentic. You hide nothing when you smile. _Really_ smile, I mean”

The voice was just as elegant as the moon. John didn’t want to speak and ruin it. It was his turn to bleed, he thought. Funny thoughts he had.

“We used to smoke staring at them”

A chill ran through John’s back as he thought of those old days. Fifties, them in the back of a truck watching the sun set and blowing smoke. Feeling invencible.

Now, the soft breeze blew around them too, rustling the high grass they laid on, spectators to the giants in the sky sharing a final dance. It was going to be a chilly night, the child of a hot day. Right now, it was perfect.

A bit of rustling sounds to his right told John that Paul had turned to look at him.

“We don’t need the cigarettes to feel like them now, do we?”

John turned to him and his breath caught. He’d almost forgotten how beautifully the moonlight shon on those angelic features. The Paul he’d known was equal parts innocent and guilty, but he’d always looked innocent. What an image. ‘Like the moon’ he thought.

“I think we don’t” he answered in a whisper. He felt the breeze grow stronger and looked up in time to see the sun gather his colors and turn yellow again, a strange figure in the baby blue sky that night. He’d never seen the sun and the moon share the canvas without killing each other before.

His hand reached out and touched Paul’s. An electricity ran through him and, for a moment, he felt like he might cry. There he was, the part of him that had been missing. There he was, his soul.

“I missed you”

Paul squeezed his hand, and his voice was softer than the breeze when he answered. But John heard it.

“I missed you too” It sounded like music.

Paul held John’s hand and felt the little fire inside the big white house being set aflame, swallowing the whole house as if it were a corpse while he burnt, finally alive. He felt the cold leaving his own bones and swallowed. He was home.

He’d grown up with it: the stigma. And though he knew it stupid and pointless, it was a hard fight against himself: one thing was to respect and support others and another, completely different thing was to need the support yourself. To risk it. Paul was ashamed to think that, not that many years ago, he would have never risked it.

Now, however, a lifetime had passed and society had changed, as well as many of Paul’s views on things. He’d become more accepting, more open to change and loving of things. And still...

As these thoughts rushed inside Paul’s mind, John suddenly stopped walking and searched his eyes with his.

“Something’s wrong. What is it?”

Paul internally sighed and marveled at John’s ability to read through him. Him and Linda were the only ones who could: Paul was very good at hiding his thoughts when he wanted to. Right now, he thought, looking at the soft, cool grass caressing their bare feet and feeling the warmth of John’s hand on his, he had nothing to hide. He began speaking.

“What does it mean, then, to be soulmates?”

John stared at him for a minute, taken by surprise.

“Do you really need words?”

Funny thing to say, that, coming from the poet. Paul had always been the wordless one, melody freak. Then again, their joint hands did have something of a poem grasped between them. Maybe they were the poem. John would know.

“Are kisses in the picture, then?”

John didn’t say anything at first. He knew that, although he’d done his fair share of experimenting back in the day, that probably hadn’t been Paul’s case, and to let go of an identity you had held onto for an entire lifetime in exchange for one you had been talked against for just as long was far from easy. John himself had gone through something like that, but he’d been much younger and had known about it for far too long.

This, however, was a very different situation.

“Aren’t we, right now? Kissing, I mean”

Their hands were kissing. Paul was suddenly very aware that nothing meant more or less than their joint hands: it was always pretty simple, he guessed. Societal rules made it into something way more complicated than it should be.

_Love is love. Of any kind._

The silence was very loud with John’s breath so close to his, and the night felt too warm with John’s hand in his. Too comfortable, too easy. It was too easy to love him. Too easy to leave behind his old self for those honest and inviting lips, that looked more intensely colored than usual due to the night. It seemed just too natural to look into those blunt and sensitive eyes of his and feel love, the need to stare into them forever.

It was then that he realized that he had always looked away.

Paul had always looked away, every time those lips seemed too inviting or those eyes too lovable. He had adverted his thoughts every time John’s laugh made him smile too wide, or his sad face want to hug him tight. And in that moment, naked and raw, feelings on display for the night to see and only himself left to understand them, Paul realized he’d always loved John in every way. He just hadn’t let himself notice it.

He wasn’t letting go of an old identity and adopting a new one. Loving John had always been a part of him: this had always been his identity. _That’s what being a soulmate meant._

As his heart felt big and warm with love, he took his time to look into the golden embers that filled John’s eyes: those almond shaped eyes with long, beautiful eyelashes. He took in the messy thick eyebrows, the few and scattered freckles around his nose, and the moles on his cheeks and jaw. He stared at the soft, now full cheeks, and at the long auburn hair. It almost burned red tonight, fueled by the fire in his eyes. John looked midway between an angel and a kid, and Paul found himself smiling at the idea.

John, still staring straight into Paul’s eyes, mimicked his gesture and Paul finally stared at those lips, those beautiful naughty lips. Those red, thin lips that reminded him of a child’s in their mischief. Lips that could inflict a lot of pain without second thought but could also sing and love like hell. Lips that spoke poetry and freedom, and want. Because John was pure sentiment.

And, suddenly, Paul was too.

The kiss was long, soft and gentle. John danced with him, warm lips against warm lips, heating up that summer night.

And they both knew they wouldn’t want to live in a world without the other’s smell on their skin anymore. Because the sun was done dying, and the moon was done hiding.

They had always been meant to share the sky. As soulmates do.

It was as soon as they pulled out to breathe that the world went black.


	6. Metamorphosis.

****

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

_Have you got color in your cheeks?_

Empty spaces and moving mouths. He could hear a hurried breath beside him that smelled warm and felt like yet another Friday night.

_Do you ever get that feeling that you can’t shift the type that sticks around like summat in your teeth?_

He shifted and moaned; his skin felt set aflame. It was comfortable enough at first, but as time moved on he felt more and more overwhelmed, fervid. The breath beside him hitched.

_Are there some aces up your sleeve?_

The breath became lips on his shoulder, and he screamed. Oh god, it burnt, it burnt.

_Have you no idea that you’re in deep?_

Burn me again.

_I’ve dreamt about you nearly every night this week_

A soft laugh in his ear, and suddenly he knew fire’s name as he felt it redefine him, violate him. He shouldn’t dream about him, not on a Friday night.

_How many secrets can you keep?_

The red overpowered the black and _(thump, thump, thump)_ suddenly he was on the ground, his heart beating to the rhythm of the blood on his wrists and a beautiful face smiling down at him. He only cried about Paul on Friday nights.

_‘Cause there’s this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow when I play it on repeat_

The black and red danced, stripped naked. John couldn’t find his breath as he watched them have sex before his eyes.

_Until I fall asleep, spillin’ drinks on my settee_

His skin felt tight and strong as Paul knelt before him, and he watched that little smirk of his once more before the kiss.

_1965._

John didn’t remember the last time he’d cried, to be honest. He didn’t remember the last time he’d allowed himself to be emotional like that, vulnerable, not even in private (not that he had any privacy those days). He kept hearing Mimi’s voice, telling him to man up, and he knew he wouldn’t be weak. He wouldn’t be a shame.

But it had built up. He had spent so, so damn long packing it all in, all of those emotions whenever they didn’t sleep enough, eat nutritive food, or just have one moment of rest and tranquility. He felt it whenever he’d hear the fans screaming (half the time, really) or when he’d check in yet another hotel.

He was tired. He was emotional, and he felt like crying.

Usually, and since John was such a sensitive person (much to his distaste), his negative emotions came flooding back as anger issues, and occasionally as introspective and silent hours. He knew he wasn’t good at managing his feelings like the other lads were, and that just made him angrier. Like he wasn’t good enough; not for them.

He’d read the papers the day before. They’d called him fat. The Fat Beatle, in fact, to capitalize it. He never had much of an issue with his body image, but he liked to feel confident (aka, he liked to be praised), and now he just felt like that was the last straw. As if he didn’t feel enough distress with all of that Beatlemania thing going on and no time to process it, as well as the straining sessions of be it the movie (now finished), the photoshoots or just composing, recording or whatever… And now, he was the Fat Beatle. As a thank you note.

John climbed up the stairs (he didn’t want to run into anyone at the lift) and reached his room, opening it to slide in and shut the door closed. He had some rare, short time to himself, since the lads had gone out drinking, but John didn’t smile to himself before laying down on his bed on a fetal position. He felt small today.

Well, small inside anyway.

So what if he ate more than usual now? With all the weed they all smoked those days, it wasn’t weird. Weed made you hungry. And why did they smoke so much weed? Because they could never relax without it, since they lacked the time. They couldn’t process their own lives, that is. ‘So it’s their own fault I’m fat’ John thought, bitterly. He wished he was more confident on that statement, though.

He was, after all, the only fat Beatle. And they were all smoking pot, weren’t they?

When the first tear made its way down his cheek John barely noticed it. It seemed inoffensive enough, closely followed by some silent friends, but it was the beginning of the fall.

At first, it felt good. It felt real and sad and out and John felt better, but then it wasn’t. The sensation of emptiness seemed to only get bigger the more he wept, and loneliness wrapped him like a blanket, asphyxiating and numbing him. He felt alone. Abandoned.

That’s why the creak of the door being opened didn’t make him jump or stop crying. That’s why, when he heard the initial hesitance being followed by the creak of the door closing and the steps getting closer to his bed, he didn’t react.

Because he knew he needed it when Paul’s warmth surrounded him and his nice, comforting smell enveloped him. He didn’t care if he wasn’t a proper man in that moment. He didn’t care if he was fat and unworthy, because he was with Paul.

He was home.

_Abbey Road._

He should probably be feeling a lot more.

The freezing sensation, ice as cold as fire and as torturing as a million needles, had died down and now Paul found himself walking down empty and cold hallways, looking for anything at all. His skin felt cold, over-sensitive and pulled tight over his bones, but he tried to ignore it the best he could as he walked, a mindless tune in his head.

_Crawling back to you._

The thumping of the drums shook him whole every time he walked, heart beating to the rhythm. His entire body seemed to have turned into glass, or into porcelain. It was so cold it burnt. As he looked down to the ground under his shoes, he realized where he was: Abbey Road. He was at the station, but it was a hallway.

_Ever thought of callin’ when you you’ve had a few?_

The first door appeared to his left, and he opened it.

A sunny day of early summer.

Linda and the kids were playing on their backyard, flowers and grass around him as Stella ran after a rabbit. Linda looked up from where she was teaching Mary how to plant and smiled warmly at him. And Paul, for some weird reason, knew it ok to close that door. He knew that Linda would always let him live. Let him love.

_‘Cause I always do_

He’d be there anyway: he must be, in her heaven. But he could be more. He walked a bit further and another door appeared, this time to his right.

_Maybe I’m too busy being yours to fall for somebody new_

John was crying. He was sat at an armchair in the dark, in what Paul knew to be his room at the Dakota building, and he was crying. The door was locked and Paul heard the knocks of small hands, Yoko’s voice calling John’s name, but the man was out of service. His long dirty hair hung over his trembling hands, half-covering a gaunt tear-stained face.

“I couldn’t have” he whispered brokenly, barely audible “As if I could. As if I could ever live without him. As if there was life without him. Oh god, why him, why him?”

 _He’s never going to hear the tapes_. _He’s never going to know._

Paul heard him sob with quiet desperation and his heart broke. Yoko wasn’t John’s Linda. John didn’t have a Linda. He didn’t have anyone.

But Paul. He retreated from that tense atmosphere, heavy with guilt and desperation, and closed the door. He couldn’t…

_Now I’ve thought it through_

He had never understood it better than then, how profoundly John felt and how impactful Paul had been to him. Silly of him to ever doubt it, to act on his doubts. He’d always, deep down, known how much John…

_Crawlin’ back to you_

Loved him.

He didn’t want to open the last door, not knowing if he could face John’s dead body again. Not now, not ever.

Not John.

_Now._

“I’m here, now” From that time he was alone (his whole life, really) it felt like a lifetime had passed. This whole fantasy (or dream, whatever it was) had made him feel complete. Had made him feel one with Paul.

“I’ll be here, forever” And John just had to smile, face long since buried in Paul’s shoulder. He didn’t know if he could speak, but he didn’t need to. He was buried deep in Paul’s soul, and Paul felt it too.

It wasn’t really anything new: it was all the old stuff from a new perspective. He’d never seen John like he was seeing him now, all of his temper and mood swings expressing nothing more than a very sensitive and mistreated soul, and he wanted to hold him forever. “I’m yours”

“And Linda’s”

“And yours”

And that settled it.

“Do you love me?” Silence, as Paul thought how to phrase it.

“I think I always did but never noticed it, you know? Never let myself notice” Took it for granted, Paul did. John nodded.

“Perks of being an introspective overthinker” he murmured, and Paul laughed.

“A poet”

The poet of his soul.

They didn’t have bodies then.

They wouldn’t.


	7. Sweet Dreams.

‘You know, you _could_ try to clean up after yourself like, once. It won’t immediately kill you’

‘Well, it might _slowly_ kill me, though’

Paul rolled his eyes as he picked up empty tea mugs and full ashtrays from the coffee table of their new home.

The house was medium size, with only four bedrooms, an attic, a large living room, a kitchen and two bathrooms. The largest bedroom was used as a music room and had a step that separated a smaller area from the rest, facing three large windows that curved outwards to the forest near the house. That spot was the art spot where they painted and such, given the great illumination. One of the other bedrooms was theirs, and the other two were guest rooms. The attic was used to store both prizes they’d won and stuff that they kept as memories but weren’t of much use, such as John’s mom’s letters and Paul’s children’s art projects for Father’s Day.

They had a huge backyard that Paul had already begun to fill with different plants, flowers and stuff (to have a nice view from the balcony of their room, he’d whispered to John with a smile), and was thinking of starting a vegetable pot in the space they had to the left of the wooden cabin-style house, as if they could get any cheekier. John, for his part, had taken to painting the inside of the walls that weren’t wooden, drawing some nice patterns and colors in the music and art room. He couldn’t stop thinking about how much like a young couple that had been together for many years but just married they were behaving, almost as natural as it had been back in the day, but now it wasn’t the same. Before, it had been platonic and yet almost real, tangible: like a rainbow you could see it, you could feel it, but it wasn’t solid. Not in their minds, not in their bodies: barriers were always there. Now, their love was not only the most solid thing they had, but it was all they had. And turns out, it was more than enough.

Linda was there too, and she wasn’t. She visited them often, popping up in their garden with the girls (who, John noticed, remained young) or riding a horse with Paul by her side. She was mostly Paul’s companion, and as such they almost shared a breath. Paul and John breathed the same breath, though.

Funnily, that old quote about the difference between soulmates and loves of life popped up in Paul’s head one day, as John helped Linda cook dinner for them and the girls. They were almost a family of three, and yet they weren’t. Because John and him were like twins of the soul instead of flesh, and Linda and him were spouses. Yet, it worked.

Come see, even grumpy John seemed to overly enjoy the kids’ company, and not only his son’s. Paul wondered what had hid all those years behind John’s moodiness and anger now that he saw him at ease. Even the melancholy that Paul didn’t know had taken over John’s soul too many times to count, and had particularly left him empty during those last years of his life, had parted, leaving him to unfold a soft, caring and almost delicate personality to contrast with the witty and very mischievous self that they all already knew and loved.

He knew why, though. He couldn’t have possibly faced such a judgmental and hurtful world with an unprotected soft heart, one that had started to suffer from the very begging at the hands of his own mother. Paul smiled as he heard John giggle with Linda in the kitchen. Now, they were free.

George visited them too, from time to time. He’d bring flowers or other plants as a gift for their growing garden, and then stayed with them for tea. They would laugh, exchange old stories and jam together, and sometimes they would even get to enjoy Maureen’s delights whenever she joined them. After a while, George started bringing Pattie too.

John could see it whenever Jim and Mary visited them. Paul had introduced him to Mary, his mother, since John had never met her, and they instantly loved each other. It’d make Julia a bit jealous whenever she came over and John talked to her about Mary, but truth is that Mary was fantastic. She was sweet and warm, and as John watched Paul in her presence, he understood all of his masks.

He’d known, or guessed, that Paul had built his masks mostly after his mother’s death. He’d had to, back in the day, to be able to move on and not break apart. Fourteen was, after all, a very difficult age to lose your mom out of them all. His dad was there too, and one look into his eyes as he glanced at his wife was able to let John know that he must’ve been a mess after her passing, despite all of his well-known strength. Paul was strong too, and he’d also been a mess after Linda’s death. John could almost see it: fourteen-year-old Paul listening to his father’s sobs at night as he tried to fall asleep, looking at the shaking frame of his brother in the bed nearby, and deciding he’d have to be the strong one.

Mask one. The strong one. The others were bound to appear as he moved on with his life, trying to run away from his feelings and ignore the inner pain. John could relate, up to a very short extent: he’d never been good at it. But Paul had mastered the numbness, the eternal activity he swam in as to not stop and feel, as to not think about it. Then, beatlemania. Mask two: the cute one. And so, it moved on.

Diplomatic personality, that one. Like a blue calm ocean, only deep enough that you’d never reach the bottom. That you’d never know what’s beneath it all: John had the strong suspicion not even Paul had known it.

John was easier to understand: fire, and more fire. He was a warm lit fireplace when on a good mood: a blaze when not.

Ringo came by after almost ten months since their settlement. He came in alone, holding a basket of fruit he’d gotten somewhere and a wide smile.

The house smelled of baked potatoes and seasoned vegetables when he arrived, and Ringo couldn’t help but to be surprised at the sight that greeted him inside.

It looked like a home. The nice, cozy and clean furniture, the smells and clinking sounds coming from the kitchen, the cat sitting on a sofa in front of a creaking and warming lit fireplace, a book on the coffee table that John seemed to have been reading, the music coming from the old vinyl player next to the piano… Ringo spotted a radio on the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, but it didn’t seem to get to be used much. Paul was wearing a cozy green jumper, blue jeans and slippers, and when John emerged from the kitchen wearing an apron that said ‘where there’s a _whisk_ there’s a way’ Ringo was sure to be having a hallucination. “Surely, I’ve died and this is heaven”, he thought, and snickered to himself.

The truth is that the image was too nice. He’d experienced them becoming museum pieces, and now there they stood, two normal blokes sharing a quiet and peaceful existence in a small house hidden from all the world’s unfairness and despair. They’d surely earned it, but Ringo still had to blink twice to adjust. “Now I’m like them” he had the fleeting thought, and he smiled. They’d all earned it.

Despite how much things had changed, Ringo couldn’t not see how much his old friends remained the same. John scolding Paul as he failed to put the table as were John’s wishes, to which Paul quietly rolled his eyes and agreed. Paul complaining that John let the cat everywhere and she left hair in all places, to which it was John’s turn to roll his eyes. They were mindless little disputes that didn’t even grow to be such, but it just proved them to remain authentic, and Ringo felt himself relaxing and slipping back into an old mindset that he had almost forgotten about: a little young man inside the old man. It was almost refreshing.

John had cooked most of the food, although Paul did part of the potatoes and the baked bread pretty well (decent, at least, Ringo thought as he chew an undercooked potato), and it was a great meal. They talked about mindless little things and Ringo relaxed, his friends as fun to be around as they’d always been. They seemed, he had to recognize later that evening, when he laid in bed caressing Barbara’s hair, more mature, though. Less childish and more… Peaceful, adult-like. He knew Paul to be the same old man he knew, though in a younger body now, and John seemed more calm too, as if the years had rubbed those hard edges that had kept him in trouble his whole life to something softer and more manageable. That, he whispered to his wife, might make possible what had once been impossible. The house cozy enough, the music warm enough, the spirits peaceful and loving enough. He knew they’d have fits, that much was unavoidable, but the young proud lads that would scream and not talk to each other in years were not there anymore.

The look in their eyes just wasn’t the same.

He had known John for many years, despite being the newest member. Anyone who would spend as much time as the Beatles did together during those crazy years would get to know each other very well, and John had always had a very sharp edge to his personality that, with the years, Ringo had thought of as somewhat defensive. He seemed to jump too fast and too high, and was always a prey of mood swings and a talkative tongue. John was like that, mad as a hatter and spontaneous, freed from conventionalisms, and yet… That edge was just a defense against the attacks his mad personality would no doubt receive. Was a defense against being ridiculed, abandoned, hurt. John had always gone too hard too fast, in everything, but now…

He seemed calm. Peaceful, as Paul stroked his shoulder or served him more soup. At first, Ringo had thought that John seemed depressed, but that calmness wasn’t about surrender. No, the defense was gone. The hard edges were gone, and now John didn’t seem to care about being ridiculed, or abandoned, or hurt… He just seemed at ease. Peaceful, open, smiling, joking and looking at Paul with such an adoration that Ringo shuddered… But he knew he had seen that look before. Less blunt, more guarded and guilty, but he’d seen it.

His thoughts were reeling when teatime came around and they all gathered around the fireplace on those cozy sofas (next to the cat), eating the apple pie and talking.

“It’s been a while” Ringo said once the conversation quieted down.

Paul hummed. “Like, what, ten months? I’ve not been good at keeping track of the days lately”

“We should” John laughed “Only thirty-nine years and two months to go”

Ringo looked up in surprise.

“What?”

Paul smiled as John sipped his tea.

“Forty years, we were given. You see, we spent forty years (ish) apart, since the death of each other, and so now we have forty more years to be together”

Ringo was astonished.

“What? Where did you hear that?”

“Our moms told us” John seemed confused at Ringo’s confusion “That’s why we’re here, and all. Living. They told us we’d live as many years together as we’d lived apart, and all that, because we were soulmates”

Ringo laughed and shaked his head, still astounded.

“Boys, you’re not ‘living’. You’re dead. You’ve got more than forty years: you have forever”

The pair stared at him.

“What?” Paul’s voice was small.

“We haven’t seen each other, Paul, in seven years. You died in a car crash on your way to pick up Beatrice from highschool. John… My other self -which has somehow bonded with my other self- hadn’t seen you in approximately the same amount of time. You killed yourself on your birthday”

Silence. Ringo could hear the drops of water falling on the sink, the sloppy sound of the cat washing herself, the birds singing outside.

“Then… We are dead? We don’t have forty years?” Paul spoke slowly, as he took John’s hand.

Ringo shook his head.

“Maybe your moms meant that you’d recover the time you’d spent apart, and recover it with profit. Endless profit”

“That… does explain that we’re seeing dead people” John whispered. Ringo smiled. Paul stared at him, suddenly realizing something.

“Wait, does that mean that you’re dead too?”

“Just arrived” he showed them all his teeth.

“They don’t know then. The living ones” John whispered to Paul that night “They don’t know that we’re soulmates”

Paul smiled. “Don’t they?”


	8. Two of Us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what I'm doing

They danced together, as they’d always done.

First, he rose strong and defiant,

Warm and riant, burning high;

He was like a child, peals of laughter

A beautiful disaster in the sky.

Then, he bled himself to death

The blood a threshold for the birth

Of his lover’s reign in the sky.

His lover was calm, dignified grace

pearl of unembraced men’s desires

unblemished beauty, hidden devotions

buried in oceans and his capricious shapes,

For his attire carries white chastity, a lie:

Before his lover’s light relieves him

His wedding vows remain.

They were the sun and the moon,

The child and the mother, the father,

Gatherers of the chaos and the calm.

Mild and glorious, never victorious

For they were forever together and apart.

They say, on prophetic nights

They were often birthed down and, once they met

Their feet fret in their feetless dance,

Back to back, balanced like a two-sided coin

Until death spared and they joined.

Don’t say it too loud if they call them soulmates.

Or as day and night collide into one

And no blood is needed when they stand front to front

And finally, finally, sun and moon get to share a sky.

Until they resurrect again.

There’s an infinity in balance.

And a forever in the two of us.


End file.
